“That date has not one stitch of biblical authority,” Camping says from his office in Oakland, California, where he also runs an evangelical station, Family Radio, that reaches listeners around the globe. “It’s like a fairy tale.”

The real date for when the sh-t will actually hit the fan, he says, is in 2011.

He supposedly knows his stuff and has followers from California to China.

Camping, 88, has scrutinized the Bible for almost 70 years and says he has developed a mathematical system to interpret prophecies hidden within the Good Book. One night a few years ago, Camping, a civil engineer by trade, crunched the numbers and was stunned at what he had discovered.